Today
Newly scuffed wrists/ the shock of discovery (mine, not hers) – she bleeds/ this is her skin but its layers peel/ there is someone else underneath. Slowly revealing themself. She does not cry. Just quietly clings as I wash her/ apply a plaster/ tell her she’s a brave girl – do I mean that brave girls don’t cry?
Later
I sit in the garden/ my book on my lap/ thinking about the moon as it races towards earth/ the elderly couple in Notting Hill/ no family but one, who is desperate to get away. It’s only a story. She sleeps upstairs and I cry a little/ in the garden/ writing this in stark white light which burns its imprint onto my eyes. / The grass is yellowing – spring has been warm this year – unseasonable. /Around me/ daisies turn their faces to the sun. / Unknown to them/ this could be their last day… Rose races towards them…/ a dirty fistful of faces already plucked.
Before
I hang washing/ a solitary teddy bear/ pegged by its ears. Dry please I tell it. Thinking of her/ of how she carries him around by the paw. Three quarters her size/ his mass humped up/ humped down/ humped up the stairs each evening/ each morning/ rescued from her cot while she sleeps. BERNARD B. BEAR dry please.
In the bath/ she splashes her temperature duck/ dunks him under the bubbles and dabs his head with her flannel/ I watch as she learns to play pretend/ duck/ rinse/ repeat/ duck/ rinse/ repeat/ duck/ rinse/ repeat/ that was me once (I think)/ in the same yellow bath/ in which she sits.
Fragments
There is a sadness in the sunshine/ in the fragments which pass me by/ in the new experiences she collects on her scuffed skin. In the hurtling moon/ in the headless daisies/ in the rinsing and repeating/ which feels like forever/ but isn’t.
Dear Mother 